A Jack the Ripper museum is opening in Whitechapel instead of the original
plan for a women's museum. Radhika Sanghani asks why

Whitechapel’s residents were looking forward to a new ‘Museum of Women’s History’. It was going to be built by Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, a former diversity chief at Google, whose planning document said:

“The museum will recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society. It will analyse the social, political and domestic experience from the Victorian period to the present day.”

Only the museum has just been unveiled and instead of being the ‘only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history’, it’s dedicated to a serial killer.

Jack the Ripper, one of the most famous – and unidentified killers of all time – is getting his own museum. The only women mentioned will be the sex workers he butchered, mutilated and ultimately murdered.

Unsurprisingly, this has not gone down well with the locals and women’s campaigners who are disappointed that the feminist museum has now taken on a misogynistic bent.

A woodcut of one of Jack the Ripper's victims (Rex Features)

Even Jack the Ripper expert and author of ‘Naming Jack the Ripper’, Russell Edwards, is against the museum:

“What the museum does is perpetuate the myth of Jack the Ripper. That masks the fact that five women were butchered by a serial killer.

“Is it really doing the public good? Especially considering they set up a museum to highlight the women in Whitechapel at the time, which is by far the more important thing.”

He has a point. This museum isn’t just disappointing because of what it was originally designed to be, but because it celebrates a murderer who did unspeakably awful things to women.

Those victims were real people who became nothing more than dismembered corpses because of this man.

Jack the Ripper's victims

His first acknowledged victim was Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, murdered Friday, August 31, 1888. She was 47 years old.

Edwards says, according to his research: “She was disembowelled and had her throat cut. He took out her intestines. This was a human being. She was five foot, dishevelled, and slightly frail.”

The second victim was Annie Chapman, murdered Saturday, September 8, 1888. He murdered her by cutting her throat, but didn’t stop there.

“He moved the front flap of her abdomen and placed it to the side,” explains Edwards. “Then he cut out her intestines and draped them over her shoulder. Finally he took her uterus with him.”

The next victim was Elizabeth Stride, murdered in the early hours of Sunday, September 30, 1888. Edwards explains that this was the night he completed a double murder.

“He cut [Stride’s] throat but was interrupted before he could complete his ritualistic mutilation. He couldn’t have that fulfilment so he looked for another murder victim.”

That was Catharine Eddowes, murdered shortly after Stride.

“He cut her nose off,” says Edwards. “He lopped one of her ear lobes off, and her eyelids. He cut two inverted Vs on her cheeks. He ripped her wide open. He placed her breasts by her feet. Then he took her uterus and left kidney.”

“Her ex-partner could only identify her by her eyeballs,” explains Edwards. “He cut her whole face off. You can see her ribcage. He hung her intestines around the room. He hacked at her left arm. He cut the flesh down to the bone on her right thigh and he put her liver between her feet and took her heart with him.”

Not all Jack the Ripper experts agree with Edwards as to the details of exactly how the women were murdered and dismembered, but it's evident that they were all killed brutally.

Violence against women

Jack the Ripper was never caught, though there are multiple theories about who he is. Edwards claims to have identified him as a 23-year-old Polish immigrant barber called Aaron Kosminski, by looking at DNA from a silk shawl allegedly found at the scene of one of his murders.

Others, such as retired British Murder Squad Detective Trevor Marriott, think that a 'Jack the Ripper' never existed, but instead a number of different people carried out the murders.

Either way, what it shows is that the new ‘Jack the Ripper Museum’ is doing nothing but highlighting the mutilation of vulnerable women, most of whom were ‘unfortunates’ – a name given to women at the time who would do anything for money, including prostitution, just to survive.

Tower Hamlets council has been aware of the change of plan regarding the musuem, and said: "Planning permission was granted in October 2014 for the change of use of the premises to space for a museum. The council was advised at that time that the premises were intended to be used as a women’s museum and supporting information was submitted with the application to suggest that the vision of the museum was to tell the story of women of the East End of London.

“Ultimately, however, the council has no control in planning terms of the nature of the museum. The council has subsequently granted consents for extensions to the premises and the refurbishment of the front of the building. The council is aware of the Jack the Ripper imagery and is investigating the extent to which unauthorised works may have been carried out at the premises.”

It means all we can do is hope that if the museum does go ahead, it will do what 'Ripperologists' such as Edwards tries to do with his work: tell the story from the victims' perspective and humanise them, instead of using their stories to sensationalise brutal violence against women.